Some would say failure to make any headway (largely due to tackling the symptoms & not the cause/source) was the reason why withdrawal was even considered.
Makes you consider Kissinger's line doesn't it?
"It's dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal".
Yeah tell yourselves that.
What? I didn't say they didn't cut down on the imports at all - but it is true (even as your chart shows) that import of Russian gas & LNG continues to this day.
Count the operational ones. Anyway, several Eastern European states are rather good at maintaining sizeable militaries - the problem is with Western Europe - Germany in particular.
It's Germany that's supposed to be Europe's biggest economy - yet it's the one that doesn't even begin to pull its weight in military matters. It's the one with less than 300 operational MBTs.
Nobody can compete. SE Asia has essentially turned into a dumping ground for Chinese imports, driving local companies out of business.
Duh.
We're seeing the price being paid now aren't we? At least in Europe. Asia might yet get its reckoning.
Why wouldn't you seek to make up for the war losses by tapping resources in territories under your control?
The US did the same:
The US is at the centre of an international row over claims to a slice of Syria's oil revenues.
www.bbc.com
An American company has reportedly reached a deal with Kurdish forces in northeast Syria to develop and export crude oil
www.voanews.com
Somebody seems to have forgotten KFOR & Yugoslavia.
Was NATO the first one to have conducted aerial bombings in Europe after WW2 or am I mistaken?
The Russian takeover of Crimea was bloodless. Does that make it legitimate?
A military alliance that indiscriminately bombed civilians in Yugoslavia poses no threat.
Right.
"...nine incidents were a result of attacks on non-military targets that Human Rights Watch believes were illegitimate. These include the headquarters of Serb Radio and Television in Belgrade, the New Belgrade heating plant, and seven bridges that were neither on major transportation routes nor had other military functions."
"Thirty-three incidents occurred as a result of attacks on targets in densely populated urban areas (including six in Belgrade)...In Nis, the use of cluster bombs was a decisive factor in civilian deaths in at least three incidents. Overall, cluster bomb use by the United States and Britain can be confirmed in seven incidents throughout Yugoslavia (another five are possible but unconfirmed); some ninety to 150 civilians died from the use of these weapons."
"On the basis of this investigation, Human Rights Watch has found that there were ninety separate incidents involving civilian deaths during the seventy-eight day bombing campaign. Some 500 Yugoslav civilians are known to have died in these incidents."
And I'm not even going into 2003 Iraq where NATO bombed thousands of civilians in an illegal war started on a cooked-up pretext.
Russia had every reason to be wary of NATO expansion eastwards.
You saw that in your crystal ball I suppose?
They cannot justify a pre-emptive strike and be anything other than a pariah state forever.
On the other hand, if they wait to be hit, they may not live to carry out a retaliatory strike.
The UN is a useless organization. It's completely penetrated by CCP as well as all kinds of Islamist influence groups.
UNRWA is basically a euphemism for Hamas at this point. All their infrastructure is Hamas infrastructure.
Bombing the crap out of the existing power structure certainly doesn't help.
